Ensemble Irini

8 mixed voices
Lila Hajosi, conductor

For both France and the Holy Roman Empire, the late 15th and early 16th centuries were a turbulent period. The rivalry between the Valois and the Habsburgs fuelled a never-ending war, punctuated by brief periods of peace.

But the greatest upheaval – the one that would change the face of Europe – was to come from Wittenberg on 31 October 1517, when Luther presented his theses to the Archbishop of Mainz, giving rise to the Reformation. Two dynasties clashed; soon, two forms of Christianity would be at odds, but, just as the waters of the Rhine in Melissus’s poem ‘mingle the waters of the Main and the Moselle*’, the musical legacy of the Burgundian school united composers under a single banner.

The motets of Brumel and Mouton are matched by those of Isaac, Walter, Galliculus and Stoltzer, the latter producing the very first sacred polyphony in the vernacular: Erzürne dich nicht über die Bösen, based on Psalm 37 in Luther’s own translation.

*Ad Rhenum, Paul Melissus, 1539–1602